Nexus One put out to pasture: no Android 4.0

I knew this day would eventually be here, but it still saddens me: According to The Telegraph, Google’s Hugo Barra has said that the Nexus One smartphone won’t officially gain the Android 4.0 upgrade. That means no Ice Cream Sandwich features and updated user interface for my faithful (but dinged up) Nexus One. Unofficially, of course, there’s every reason to believe that my 22 month old handset will get a third-party port.

My Nexus has seen at least 100 custom ROM flashes, so one more is no big deal, especially if the hardware itself can handle it. I initially figured that Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich software would require a dual-core processor, but that’s not the case. Google will be bringing Android 4.0 to the Nexus S, which like my Nexus One, uses a single-core CPU.

The biggest internal difference between the two Nexus phones is actually in the storage capacity. My Nexus One has a scant 512 MB of internal memory, of which only 190 MB is available for application storage. In contrast, the Nexus S has 16 GB of storage, with 1 GB considered internal storage and the remaining 15 GB as external / USB memory. A third-part port of Android 4.0 then, could be a tight squeeze on the Nexus One.

This is just another sign that it might be time for me to let go of the ol’ Nexus. I hung on to it mainly because as a Google phone, it was often the first to see Android updates; directly from Google itself, not from the carriers. Now that it won’t, and considering there are far more advanced Android phones available — yes, I’m looking at you Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy Nexus — I’m planning moving on to a new Android phone.

So long Google Nexus One. Thanks for the ride and for showing me how has Android matured from a clunky touchscreen user interface to something far more useful and usable. Your dessert-named software always satisfied my tastes.

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